When Role Models Have Flaws: Static Validation of Enterprise Security Policies

Modern multiuser software systems have adopted role-based access control (RBAC) for authorization management. This paper presents a formal model for RBAC policy validation and a static-analysis model for RBAC systems that can be used to (i) identify the roles required by users to execute an enterpri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07) pp. 478 - 488
Main Authors Pistoia, M., Fink, S.J., Flynn, R.J., Yahav, E.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.05.2007
Subjects
Access control
Application software
Authorization
Database systems
Information security
Java
Permission
Protection
Runtime
Software systems
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Summary:Modern multiuser software systems have adopted role-based access control (RBAC) for authorization management. This paper presents a formal model for RBAC policy validation and a static-analysis model for RBAC systems that can be used to (i) identify the roles required by users to execute an enterprise application, (ii) detect potential inconsistencies caused by principal-delegation policies, which are used to override a user's role assignment, (Hi) report if the roles assigned to a user by a given policy are redundant or insufficient, and (iv) report vulnerabilities that can result from unchecked intra-component accesses. The algorithms described in this paper have been implemented as part of IBM's enterprise security policy evaluator (ESPE) tool. Experimental results show that the tool found numerous policy flaws, including ten previously unknown flaws from two production-level applications, with no false-positive reports.
Bibliography:SourceType-Conference Papers & Proceedings-1
ObjectType-Conference Paper-1
content type line 25
ISBN:9780769528281
0769528287
ISSN:0270-5257
1558-1225
DOI:10.1109/ICSE.2007.98